February 25, 2026
HOW DISNEY BECAME THE JUGGERNAUT
Walt Disney began his career as a commercial artist at age 18 in 1919. The next year, he opened his own commercial art studio, which failed in one month. Two years later, he incorporated his first animation company. That failed within a year. After two bankrupted business attempts, Disney moved to Hollywood and started a third business with his brother Roy. In 1928, he created Mickey Mouse and released the first cartoon with synchronized sound. In 1932, he created the first full-color cartoon. In 1937, he released Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first feature-length animated film.
January 30, 2026
CAN AMTRAK BE PROFITABLE?
Last month we did a deep dive into the data behind freight and passenger rail traffic in the United States, noting that Amtrak has never had a single profitable year, and has lost $46 billion since its inception in 1971. For 2026, Amtrak requested a Congressional grant of $2.4 billion while promising to be operationally profitable by 2028. That is ambitious, to say the least, but according to international data, it might be downright impossible.
December 30, 2025
WHY THE UNITED STATES DOESN'T HAVE HIGH-SPEED RAIL
In 1965, the High-Speed Ground Transportation Act was enthusiastically passed by Congress to set the United States on a path to lead the world in rail transportation. Instead, European and Asian countries led the way, while the United States created one line, the Metroliner, between New York City and Washington, DC, which was discontinued in 2006. Several reasons are typically given to explain the difficulty in creating a high-speed rail network, primarily outdated tracks, lack of funds, lack of will, and the sheer size of the country. But there may be a clearer hindrance to its development: capitalism.
November 29, 2025
HOW MUCH IS A 30-SECOND AD ON THE LATE SHOW?
On July 2, 2025, Paramount reached a $16 million legal settlement with President Donald Trump over allegations that the network tried to interfere with the 2024 presidential election by editing a 60 Minutes interview with candidate Kamala Harris. That night on The Late Show, Stephen Colbert called the settlement a "bribe" to ensure the pending merger of Paramount and Skydance would not be blocked by the administration. Fifteen days later, CBS announced that it was canceling The Late Show. Rumors began to swirl that the decision was politically motivated, especially because The Late Show had been the top rated late night show for nearly ten years.
September 24, 2025
IS MONEY MEANINGLESS?
Every few years, someone in the United States brings up the idea of returning the country to the gold standard. Most recently, a bill was introduced in the House of Representatives in 2023, and a call to return to a commodity-backed currency was published in the 2025 Mandate for Leadership. The argument is always that tying currencies to gold would control spending and inflation. J.P. Morgan is often quoted from his testimony before Congress in 1912, "Money is gold, and nothing else," to support the view that money without gold backing is meaningless. But the United States is not alone, because every single country in the world uses fiat currency, which is not backed by any commodity. Romanticized dreams of the gold standard aren't usually rooted in data, but money is big business, so let's look at the numbers.
August 20, 2025
COVID DID NOT KILL THE MOVIE INDUSTRY
There's a classic, tragic story that the media loves to recount. A global pandemic forced us all into lockdown, and many businesses had to shut their doors, but no industry suffered more than movie theaters. Not only were theaters closed for months, but Hollywood studios followed Netflix's lead and embraced streaming in a way that crippled their own industry. It's a compelling, dramatic tale that has been documented by Cinema United, the national association for movie theaters, with data of decimated box office revenues. That data has been included in every annual report of AMC, the largest movie theater chain in the world, since 2020, not so subtly reminding its investors that an event beyond all control eternally altered its business model and revenues. Cinema United is a private organization and doesn't release the methodology for its data, plus it possesses an obvious conflict of interest. Luckily, five studios account for over 80% of all movie ticket revenues, and three theater chains account for 50% of those same revenues, and they're all public companies with published annual data. So let's see if the facts match the story.
June 30, 2025
PEPSI LOOKS MORE LIKE NUMBER ONE
Last year, the beverage industry was rocked by a move that many thought was an impossibility. After decades of the iconic "cola wars" between soda giants Coke and Pepsi, Dr Pepper actually surpassed Pepsi to become the second most popular soda in the United States. Pepsi has trailed behind Coke for most of the two brands' histories. From 1985 to 1989, Pepsi was briefly the number one soft drink after Coca-Cola's New Coke debacle. But looking at the data visually, it is clear that Pepsi peaked in popularity in 1980 and has been declining ever since. Multiple media outlets covered the story with various speculations on what the news means for the future of Pepsi. But to understand Pepsi's future, we have to look at Pepsi's past.
July 31, 2024
CAN SPOTIFY SAVE ITSELF?
The music industry continually views the year 1999 as both its crowning achievement and the beginning of the end. That year saw peak sales of compact discs, the first digital form of music, totaling $14.6 billion. That same year, Napster was launched, allowing free digital music downloads until it was sued out of existence in 2001. But the damage had been done, and the music industry found itself in a downward spiral of continually diminishing revenues. But in 2011, a solution appeared that promised to reverse this trend. That year, Spotify launched its application in the United States, and by 2014, music revenues were growing more than 6% every year. This is how Spotify saved the music industry.
June 27, 2024
TESLA'S FUTURE LOOKS LIKE THE PAST
On February 6, 2023, an investor named Charlie Bilello posted a tweet comparing the financial performance of Tesla with GM and Ford. The post compared figures from 2012 and 2022. In 2012, GM and Ford revenues exceeded $130 billion, while Tesla revenues were $413 million, less than 1% of the automotive juggernauts. By 2022, Tesla revenues had increased to 52% of GM and Ford, but more importantly, its profits had surpassed its competitors. Tesla CEO Elon Musk retweeted the post with the caption "How times have changed." Various media outlets repeated the figures with headlines like "Tesla Makes Twice as Much Money as GM and Ford Combined" and "Tesla Will Overthrow GM and Ford by 2027." The news doubled Tesla's market valuation to nearly $800 billion, 16 times more than both GM and Ford, which were valued at $49 billion. So is the hype warranted, are the analyses true, and most importantly, is the data complete?
May 25, 2024
WHO KILLED THE POST OFFICE?
In 2006, Congress passed the Postal Accountability and Enhancement Act. Instituting a number of changes, the most interesting one was the mandate that the United States Postal Service must fund in advance the health and retirement benefits of all postal employees for 50 years. Numerous articles have been published over the past 17 years citing this one requirement as the downfall of the Post Office. The argument is that Congress took an organization with $6 billion in profits and turned it into a massive failure with $160 billion of debt. According to the data, is that what really happened?
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